Had a tough week, my arthritis came back. Not debilitating like last fall, but bad enough to prevent me from skating or having much of any energy. It seems like this is a response to being sick awhile ago. So that’s probably how my life will be for awhile. Anytime I get sick I can expect an arthritis flare up a few days after. Ugh, but, could be a lot worse.

Anyways, I met Jack and Bernie at Casey Middle School and we dorked around on these rocks for awhile. All I did was an axle stall. Bernie is just starting to skate again after recovering from a knee injury so he’s keeping it mellow and having fun. After a bit we went on to film Jack work on hot pocketing his back foot. He succeeded. Ouch.

We went to this gem of a spot next. I spent about an hour trying nose manual front 180 out on the curb. I came close, but did not succeed. I’m gonna partly blame the excessive wheel bite bumming me out. Bernie did some neat manual tricks and giggled a bunch and ruled it. Carleigh showed up and also had to keep it mellow due to her back. Man, we are geezers. Ha, Jack isn’t though and he put together a rad little line which I pointed the camera at without even shaking it too much.

Today’s Dinosaur Jr hype is this epic photo of J and his daughter. Nice Gonz shirt!

In anticipation of the new Dinosaur Jr album in 33 days (digital download in 19 days) I’m gonna start hyping it with a link or two a day. Up first is this classic performance on the Letterman show from 1991. It’s so funny when the Letterman band guitarist gets completely owned by J. Best band ever.

This hyped me up so much! I need to skate more like the dork I am.

I was still tired from the long family vacation, but got some stuff done and the kids were playing with friends. John got off work at Meta and picked me up to head to Broomfield. The park had a bunch of lurkers, but not many people actually skating. John said he was tired too, but he was ripping. We mostly skated the black ledge after a few minutes of cruising around to warm up. He’s got a lot of rad switch noseslide tricks. He had a super sick run of ollie over the rail, front 50 the smile ledge then “nollie back tail” the black ledge. He almost did some front 50 back 180s out the proper way too. I got my first front 5-0 shove out in awhile, boardslid the little rail a bunch, got a few really slow back 50s, and comitted to front nosegrinds on the black ledge which would be the first time I’ve ever tried it on something of normal ledge height. Decent, quick session. Oh yeah, I had a new ‘Bottom of the Well” 8.38 deck and new 52 mm supers. Felt good!

Had to break in some new shoes since my Lakai’s were dead. I had gotten some Etnies Rojo’s awhile ago from Meta. They seemed great for skating and turned out to be decent at least. My board and wheels are totally shot too, but mostly my legs were just super sore and stiff from driving from Omaha. I didn’t do much even though I tried for awhile. F/s halfcab flip was probably the only highlight. Oh and a heelflip that rotated on the ground and a really bad slam due to wheelbite. Argh. Happy to be home though.

Goose turds everywhere.

Next morning we hit the Rochester skatepark after a fine breakfast at Grandma’s Kitchen. Yum! This park didn’t exist 20 years ago.

Ollie was cruising around and ripping. There was almost no one at the park so we could do whatever. He was doing 180 flyouts both ways, manuallying the deck of the crack ridding halfpipe, 180’ing into banks, doing hippy runs over ledges and having a blast. I didn’t expect much from myself and apparently was coming down with pink eye once again (it’s a symptom of reactive arthritis) and mostly just chilled. I did front rock and front d on the qp after cruising around for a long time then skated the smallest ledge I could find for awhile. Got crooks, noseslide, noseslide to fakie, front 50, front 50 180, front 50 shove, front 5-0, couldn’t do back 50 and it started raining so we left. I was hyped to see one somewhat older person at the park, but it sure is weird when everone wears headphones. Oh well, goodbye Rochester, maybe we’ll see you again some year and maybe I’ll still be skating ..

I started skating in junior high, but it was here in 10th grade that I turned into a lifer. I lived in Rochester for 5 years. Three years of high school and two years of community college. It’s where I decided that skateboarding was the best thing ever and found Dinosaur Jr. Not a lot has chanced since then. In the midst of a long summer vacation we had an extra day so I could visit Rochester for the first time in almost 20 years (19 to be exact). After seeing my old house we hit the nearby middle school where I learned how to grind on this curb. I still remember how the day went. Solo mission in the crisp midwest autumn air. Had never done more than a few lucky grinds, but did like 20 of them and a 5-0 or two. It was easily the most stoked I had ever been.

I had totally forgotten about this wallride right at the front entrance of the school. I did a few wallrides on it, Ollie did a little wallride to fakie with just the front wheels.

Not sure if I could do frontside wallrides back then, but I could now.

Ollie’s favorite trick is the Coffin and he had fun doing it down the hill.

I don’t remember this curb being there, it was fun to boardslide through the “skate stoppers”. This spot was funner then I remember, the little hill after the ledge was fun to do tricks into. This might also just be me being delusional and excited to be skating these old spots. Not even to just be skating them, but skating them with Ollie.

I had totally forgotten about the loading dock in the back too. A friend of mines car got stuck back there and he was pinned between his car and the loading dock at one point. So crazy. I’m not sure why we didn’t skate it more back then. Maybe it’s because people hadn’t really started jumping down stuff then. I 180’d it and Ollie rode off it. Then we went to lunch at Grandma’s Kitchen where I worked in high school. So awesome.

After lunch and checking into our hotel I brought Ollie to my favorite skatespot from my Rochester days. Kellogg Middle School. The loading dock in the back was my favorite. The metal ledge thing especially. I learned a lot of tricks on that thing. Tricks I can’t do anymore like front 50 to front lip to front 50 180 out. Ha those were the days. They had made an attempt to skate stop it, but it didn’t last. I did a bunch of 50s and 5-0s and had a weird familiar feeling. I skated that spot so many times back then it felt like I was home. I tried a few of the 50 to lip combos, but couldn’t do it. No biggee.

This gap started getting some play near the end of my Rochester days. I don’t think my brother or I ever even tried to ollie it. It’s kind of funny looking back and wondering why I would have never tried this knowing most of my friends did. I was longer then I remembered it being, but not as tall as I had thought. Which I guess made it a little hard, but I ollied it. Only once and it was sketchy, but whatevs, I’m just hyped that I ollied a gap at 39 that I couldn’t do at 19.

To hype me up for the gap I did a fakie nosegrind on the slightly downhill part of the ledge, treflip on flat then ollie the gap. Ollie was really stoked on the ollie (ollie ollie ha) and said he didn’t think I could ollie something that big. Nice. We used to do the fakie nosegrinds there a lot I remember. Super fun right there. It’s also funny that I did a treflip, because I never landed a treflip back then. I got close and I remember getting super close one night where I ditched prom for an H-Street demo and we all skated Kellogg after. That was a fun night. Anyways, yeah, more super hyper rambling. I was excited to do a treflip at a spot where I had tried and failed over and over to learn them.

I can’t describe how awesome it felt to skate an old high school spot with Ollie. He doesn’t skate a whole lot these days, but he seemed to pick up on my excitement and killed it. Back 180 off.

He also boardslid this side. Bad cell phone photo on my part.

Ollie got a little board of the blue ledge spot, so we went and check out the new stuff. I think this might have actually been put in right before I moved. You can see how serious the session was in the video. When Ollie did his run the first time I got his back with an ollie over the curb out of the ramp. It was fun. There was some rad ledges nearby too that I’m not sure why we never skated in the past. They were waxed up real good too. We sat around for awhile and I kept thinking we were in Boulder since I totally felt like I was at home. So funny. We went back and met a friend from high school for dinner and talked to him for several hours.

So good to see you Pat!

I thought I’d be retiring for the night, but since it would be my only night (ever again?) to skate downtown Rochester I went for it. First spot I ended up at was really fun. I started with a manual across this which had a horrible approach..

.. ollied up the curb, then did a fun little carve on this, then ..

.. noseslide or boardslide on pretty much the most perfect marble ledge ever. Well, except for that fact that it was really tall and I was really tired. But look at that ledge? It’s perfect!

I wandered to this other bank spot I remember only skating once back in the day. I have no idea why I thought this downtown was big. It’s like 6 blocks, it’s so easy to skate it all. Anyways, the bank spot was not as good as I remember, especially with the pebbles everwhere from the road construction. I moved on, saw this in the road and ollied it in a couple tries. It was easy one way as it had a long approach. I wanted to ollie it going to the other way too though which was close to the sidewalk so I had to setup quick after dropping off the curb. Being the dork I am I decided to line it out, back 180 up the curb, sw front 180 in total darkness, then ollie the pole. It took me forever and my first few back 180s were so ridiculously dumb. After that I rolled and walked around for awhile not really finding anything.

I saw this, kinda surprised it didn’t have any marks at all. But the rail was weird. I considered dropping in on it, but used my exhaustion as an excuse not to.

I came up on these. They are insanely perfect. The entire building was surrounded with them. I wanted to front 50 one of them, but kept slipping off and almost hitting my face on the wall so I settled with crooks. I rolled out because I thought it would be a bust.

I came up on this corner and about freaked. There was a perfect round bar, perfect ledge (behind the round bar) and a decent flat bar (more behind the round bar). Being the exhausted old dude I was I went with the easiest of the three..

.. the ledge! I remember skating this back in the day too. It grinded really good. I had some from 50s and crooks that felt so good. Cops drove by and didn’t say anything. That definitely didn’t used to be the case. It was kind of weird because the only people out that late were people in scrubs or Mayo Clinic patients so skateboarding definitely stood out. I skated it for awhile though. I did a bunch of crooks going backside because it was just so fun. It would lock in and go. I don’t think I got anything crazier then a front 5-0 the other way, but I had a blast regardless. I cruised around a bit longer, but was too tired to skate anything else. Super hyped I went on the night mission. Super hyped to have seen Rochester again and skate some of the old spots. Sorry for what I believe is the longest skate journal entry I have ever wrote. Hopefully it wasn’t also the most boring. I should add that this was the first day I truly enjoyed having the bigger setup. Maybe it’s because my body remembered the huge boards we rode back then.

It took me literally 2 hours to find the location of this skatepark online. Note to the city of Waunakee, put the address to the park in your literature. Geez. Anyways, I recruited Ollie (he wouldn’t go until I actually knew where it was) and it was pretty early still. There was a family there when we arrived. The dad was doing kick turns in Nike running shoes (same thing as Nike SB in my book) and his kids were scootering, biking, or running around the park. We started on the ramp. Ollie did rock ‘n roll which is kinda tall for him. I didn’t do much before we moved over to the “street course”.

The photo above is a bit of a park overview. Okay, well it shows everything except two flat bars and the back of the halfpipe has a quarterpipe. Everything was built great and skated great. In other words it’s way better than Boulder park. My side was not hurting anymore. I got a run of b/s flip on the flat bank then manual across the lower manny pad. Ollie did a sick front board on the low box, back 180’d off the taller one, and cruised around for awhile before wanting to go. I did a few front lips on the low box, front 50s on the tall one, crooks, ollie onto the low box to boardslide the tall box and ended it with an ollie onto the low box front 50 on the tall box followed by a treflip on flat. Neat. Time to go have a family bbq.

I laid off the sauce at the bbq with the intention of breaking loose later on and skating the University of Wisconsin. I was tired, but I knew this would be my only chance. I started here as it’s where I had stayed for my brothers wedding. It wasn’t as good as I remembered, but I skated around, did a few ollies down 3 stairs, some bad tailslide attempts, etc before moving on. I had my directions backwards though and started skating the wrong way and ended up in a weird area of campus that doesn’t have much.

I found this though. It was dark which made it even scarier than it should be. I ollied into it and had a fun powerslide in the parking lot below.

I saw this. I’m not sure what’s up with the part that isn’t waxed. I’m thinking the city recently put in the straight part of the ledge or something to try and deter skating?

Finally found a good spot! It was under construction though so almost no run up and the landing was a few feet before a busy street. I managed to boardslide the whole thing and hang up on a noseslide. I was getting really tired and frustrated that I couldn’t remember where the ledges were I really wanted to skate. I rolled past my car, tempted to retire for the night, but decided to move on.

I was rewarded with immediately finding the spot I wanted to skate originally. Awesome! But kind of a bummer that I spent so much time pushing around before I even got to the good stuff. This ledge isn’t tall and there are a bunch of them around this building. It’s on an upper level so it’s kind of weird seeing the ground below when your grinding. That and those lights in the background are super bright. I got front 50, front board, back noseslide, back crooks and was working on more, but was told that I couldn’t skate there by security. Doh. They said I could skate in front of the building though…

So I skated this for a bit. Front rock, axle stall and rock fakie. I was so tired. There was some other stuff nearby that looked really fun, but there was a ton of college kids walking by and I was too tired to deal with them.

Oh yeah it turns out I was also right next to the building where my brother’s wedding reception was. Pretty cool.

I went around a corner and found this. A perfect metal ledge on perfect ground. I couldn’t pass it up even though I’m sure it’s still on campus grounds. It didn’t even have marks on it yet. I did a couple front 50s then decided I wanted to get a nosegrind on it. It took awhile. I had some pretty bad slams doing flatground due to the crazy wheel bite you get with a bigger board (will ever get used to it?). I kept bonking the back wheels on the nosegrinds, but everytime I would get a little further out until eventually it was just a little tap with the back of the tail which I’ll accept as I’m still getting used to the bigger setup. All in all a fun night, glad I went, wish I would have gone the right way right away as there was even more fun stuff around the area.

Day 2 started at Donut Hill as well. Same crew, but no Drew, he would meet up later. Riley was super beat up, sore and tired. I was feeling better and instead of filming I skated. Other then the weird pain in my side only when I would drop in I was good. I got grinds around the corner (top left in the photo above), scratch grinds on the pool coping on the top right and carved tile in the deep end. I was hyped. Dan was ripping too and got a front disaster. Not bad for a dude that claims he can’t skate any tranny over 4 feet. At the very end Matt said you cant treflip on big boards so I beat him to a treflip challenge. Take that Matt! Ha as if I’m that defensive of big boards. We went to a few spots, but Riley wasn’t feeling them. Then we ended up here:

Drew knew the people that live at this and invited them all out for a session. Everyone was super good except me. You had to roll through a little dirt patch and it messed with me so bad. I only managed rock ‘n roll, front rock and a weak little crook/jib thing. One of the dudes did kick back tail. So rad. Riley killed that thing. He got a bunch of tricks including a stalefish disaster. WTF? Oh and it was first try. After that Drew had to go so we went back to Fremont. Matt and joe had shown us some good spots and we ended up at a bank to loading dock manny pad where Riley got a banger. I skated with Joe a tiny bit before Riley got close and we were playing a game of SKATE, but I was sucking to new levels and was happy to film Riley. Last spot was a pretty long 3 flat 1 that Riley committed to sw heel on, but rolled his ankle bad. Doh. Day done, session over, sleep time. Riley it ruled seeing you. Drew, thanks for the amazing tour guiding. Motive, you guys are the best.